Working for Fun

I suspect most of my old climbing and skiing buddies back in Washington think I've lost a few marbles after trading my former life of sailing, skiing, and climbing for a new life of manure, teats, weeds, and hay.  I certainly wasn't going to waste my life watching TV and mowing the lawn like so many people I knew, and running a farm seemed just a shade more tolerable than mowing a lawn for the rest of my life.  I would've never wanted to tie myself down with daily milking chores.  Every spare dollar and minute I had was devoted to play.

Something changed for me.  Maybe it was just getting older.  Terrifying Rachel on one especially stormy sailing trip made it tough to take the sailboat (which doubled as our house) out for a weekend.  The arrival of our son Henry added a new hurdle to any trip to the mountains (Are the diapers packed?   Sippy cup?  Oh wait -- it's his nap time now!).  Then there were my nagging doubts that driving 100+ miles to get to the mountains and back wasn't exactly a model of environmental responsibility, particularly in light of new knowledge about ocean acidification and the acceleration of climate change.  Playing on the weekends also seemed to lack a sense of purpose that became increasingly important for me.  Added up together, the reasons began to make my usual "fun" a little less so.  

Around 2004, a friend loaned me a couple of books by Richard Heinberg (The Party's Over and Power Down).  At the time I had pretty much written off any concerns over peak oil.   I was smugly confident in the fact that alternative energy sources would be found, just as my economics classes suggested they would.  Heinberg's books did a good job of shooting down that idea, and made me think that I might want to alter course in preparation for what was coming. 

Another event played a role as well.   My son started bringing home the "disease of the week" from daycare.  A chronic sinus infection set in, and I made repeated trips to the doctor for an antibiotic which would resolve my constant fever and fatigue.  I had a CT scan of my sinuses to see if there was anything requiring surgery.  The CT scan came back with notes of a "possible meningioma", which didn't exactly brighten my mood.  After 9 months I finally found an antibiotic that worked, and a year later I went in for an MRI to settle the question of the brain tumor, which didn't exist after all.  In the elapsed time, I decided that it might be a good idea to take my health a little more seriously, and that meant taking my diet seriously.   I discovered the Weston A. Price foundation, which dramatically changed my views on good food vs. bad food.  

So did I in fact trade a life of fun and adventure for a life of monotony and drudgery?  Not at all!  Well... not most of the time anyway.   The many animals on our farm ensure that there's never a dull moment, and continuously amaze me with their intelligence and affection.  Every day I'm learning something new and interesting about them.  It turns out that even the "drudgery" of forking manure isn't that bad either.   Just this evening, our border collie pup decided to try and catch every cowpie I flung on the manure heap, which turned it into a game for both of us and an unwelcome bath for her.

Working with horses has been a real learning experience, and taking Bobby out in the buggy is a blast as well.  On our last trip this week, we were flagged down by an Amish man who was working on a house nearby.   He was surprised to see a buggy so far away from the usual Amish haunts, and perhaps even more surprised to see that the driver wasn't Amish.  When I explained that the buggy was one of my ideas for dealing with energy scarcity, he agreed that it was a good idea, and lamented the fact that many of the Amish are just as dependent upon fossil fuels now as are their "English" counterparts ("English" is the Amish term for all of us non-Amish).
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So what's new on the farm these days?

We've put up a greenhouse alongside the garden, which we're really looking forward to using.   That should extend our growing season by a couple months at the very least, and allow us to produce salad greens year-round now.   It's nothing huge (16x28'), just a hoop house, but should meet our needs for now.

The well we put in last year is all ready for the hand pump, which should be installed here in about a week.  Considering that we typically go through 100 gallons a day for the animals alone, I don't think we'll shut our electric pump down anytime soon, but it will be nice to have a manual option, particularly when the grid goes down in a couple years due to the upcoming solar storms, at which point it will likely stay down. 

Okay, okay -- chances are that such a storm wouldn't affect the whole US, but it's a possibility.  I wouldn't need electric lights when the grid goes down, 'cause the nearby Palisades and Cook power stations will keep the night sky glowing with their meltdowns.   As this nuclear engineer notes, nukes don't do well without a functional electric grid.  Each nuclear power plant is a bold statement that there will never be another war, terrorism incident, natural disaster, or dumb mistake.   Maybe us humans deserve the fate we've created.   Back to the farm...

The garden is all ready to go;  peas are planted, and potatoes will likely go in tomorrow.   We just planted a half acre of "hull-less" oats, which will be our first experiment with small grains.  My only harvesting equipment is a grain cradle for now.   Chances are we'll be hand-tying the sheaves and threshing with flails.  I keep thinking that an old pull-behind combine like an Allis Chalmers All-Crop would be nice though...

Field corn will be going in here in a couple weeks.   This year I've decided to try Reid's yellow dent instead of the Henry Moore (both open-pollinated varieties), for the sole reason that it will fit the seed plates on my planter better.  It's either that or find a new planter, because my 100 year old Deere & Mansur planter is too old and obscure to find new seed plates for.  Otherwise, I think we'd continue planting the Henry Moore.

While plowing our garden with the horses a few weeks ago, I realized that the left line wasn't responding due to a buckle hooked on the check-rein.   Losing steering is always a bad thing with horses, and this was no exception.  Horses naturally like to freak out.  They took the walking plow for a spin through the orchard (fortunately missing all of the trees) and ended up coming to a stop in the raspberries I'd just wired up.  The only damage was to a couple wires and some raspberry canes, but both of the old leather harnesses had multiple tears. 

I decided that it was probably time for a new set of harnesses anyway, so we're waiting on those at the moment.   The new harnesses use a different design to avoid the problem we encountered, though I'm sure I can still find a different way to screw things up.  But every cloud has a silver lining.   While we're waiting for the new harnesses, we've been super productive while we use the tractor for everything.

Winter Update

Our ewes started lambing a little early this year, with two that popped out the last weekend in January while I was taking a blacksmithing class at Tillers.   Temps dropped to -4F last week.  Though the lambs were under a heat lamp, that's still pretty cold. 

They both developed a cough which we feared was pneumonia (the most common cause of mortality among lambs), but they seem to be holding out alright and don't have a temperature.  One of them is a ram, who I just banded this morning.  "Banding" is the nice term for castrating with a special rubber band.   All things considered, he took it very well.   Better than I would anyway.

Rosie

The herdshare dairy is doing well, with new customers trickling in as well as existing customers purchasing more shares.  We've purchased our fourth cow, a Jersey we dubbed "Rosie".  She's expected to calve in about a week, which should be just in time.  If we count the calves, hers will put us at 7 cows.   

As a matter of curiosity, I counted the number of teat squeezes it takes to fill our milk bucket. It's about 2,000 squeezes per cow or  roughly 1,000 per gallon.
 
The cows are going through a lot of hay, which forced us to venture down to the hay auction in Middlebury.  We bought two nice loads which all the cows like (that's been a problem before -- they're *very* picky cows!).

Just as I was leaving the office at the hay auction, I was accosted by the Amish puppy-peddlers who had exactly what I'd been recently contemplating.  Now we have a 9 week old border collie.  "Clover" likes to tinkle a lot, so I've been getting a little less sleep this week while trying to make sure the tinkle action is mostly outside. I'm hoping that someday she'll be able to round up the sheep or cows for us, but for now she's content to terrorize our carpets and barn cats. 

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Bobby and I have been getting out pretty regularly, and I decided it was finally time to try a trip into Constantine, the less threatening of our two nearest towns.  The drive there is wonderful -- most of it on gravel roads through a game area, with the balance made up of low-traffic roads through farmland.  We only had about 1/4 mile of "scary" road, where we have to be on the highway to cross a bridge.

The trip to town went well, but it was cold (temps in the teens).   I tied Bobby up to a tree at the boat launch, and then ventured across the street to a cafe for lunch and warmth.  I kept a nervous eye on him, as Bobby has managed to loosen his lead rope and escape when tied up before, but he behaved well this time.  A little girl convinced her mother to stop the car so they could get out and pet him.

As we turned back onto the highway for the trip home, I took the left lane over the highway bridge, knowing that I would have to turn left shortly after we crossed.  Bobby doesn't like semi trucks, btw.  One truck came up on our right and slowly passed us.  Then another line of trucks came at us in the opposite lane.   Bobby started galloping through his own personal hell, despite me pulling the lines back as far as they would go.  I unclenched my bladder muscles and thanked him for staying in his lane as we turned off of the highway and slowed back down to a trot. 

They say sailing is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror.  Driving a buggy is a lot like sailing.
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Rachel has been taking advantage of the recent snowfall (which looks as if it will be melting this week, unfortunately) on her x-c skis, with me tagging along when I finish my morning chores early enough.  Bilbo the sausage-dog goes along too, but has managed to maintain his portly physique despite the new exercise regimen. 

Henry and I took some time this last weekend to check out the local ski area -- a whopping 10 minutes from our house, with a dramatic 225' of vertical.  He became master of the rope-tow, and by the end of the day was already making parallel turns. 
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In case you hadn't noticed, Mother nature is starting to swing her axe, solving the problems we refuse to face with her somewhat unpleasant methods.  In the last 12 months, we've seen major climate related crop failures on nearly every continent but Antarctica, which suffered a 100% crop loss.  Russia, Ukraine, Pakistan, China, Brazil, Australia, and now Mexico have all seen significant losses.  The current political turmoil in Egypt is in many ways a result of these crop failures, as they're the world's largest wheat importer.  They also lost the ability to export oil (and pay for their food) last year.  Jeff Rubin, former chief economist at CIBC bank in Canada, has an excellent article that spells it out.  Mubarak was the least of their problems.  James Kunstler penned a fantastic blog on Egypt as well.  The first paragraph alone is an absolute gem!

It's only a matter of time before this hits the US, and will likely collapse our questionable dollar which is already burdened by our massive debt and the need to import 2/3 of our fuel.  Do you think the already strained electrical grid will remain running if that happens?  Could you still get clean water if the grid collapses and fuel becomes unavailable?  Food?  Heat?  For most of us, the answer is no, and the results will not be pleasant.  Our fully automated society isn't as resilient as it was even 50 years ago.  Now is a good time to cover your bases, because you won't be able to do it afterwards. 

On the plus side, a collapse of industrial society is our best chance throw a monkey wrench into the processes that the climate models are warning of.  Business as usual will otherwise raise us by 4 degrees C by mid century - which the geological record suggests will drive all large mammals (like us) to extinction.  Isn't it nice to know that us humans are smart enough to avoid such a terrible mistake?

The Allure of Poverty

Being as I am a contrary sort of fellow, I see the dairy as having a greater long term potential than my normal "day job", where I work for a software company that supports equipment dealerships around the country.  The declines in world energy production will ultimately have a significant and negative impact on the equipment industry (among other things), eventually impacting my job as well.

With this in mind, I decided to sit down and run some numbers.  At one time I figured we could realize an annual profit of about $4,000 per cow, which I still think is entirely possible if I weren't stuck on maintaining my ideals (grass-only feeding, calves remaining with their mothers, etc).  While I didn't figure out a "per cow" profit this time around, I did calculate the hourly wage that I'm making.   So long as I don't try to amortize any of our capital investments (farm, fencing, cows, hay equipment, etc), my optimistic Enron-style accounting says I'm raking in about $2/hr.  Not too bad for a hobby, but not so great for a primary career choice.

So let's just say that the slight pay differential between life as a programmer and life as an idealistic dairy farmer makes it very difficult to choose the latter in lieu of the former.  When the time comes that "dairy farmer" becomes the better (or only) option, I'm hoping that $2/hr might actually be a good wage, but at that point money might not have any value anyway.  For now, I have a renewed love of programming.

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Our hogs and lambs have all returned from the butcher in neat little packages that have taken up residence in the freezer. 

I thought it would be difficult to eat an animal that I'd raised.  I wanted separation.  A firewall.  I didn't want to have to reconcile the death of an intelligent creature with the food I would be eating.  I didn't want to name any of the animals that were destined for the butcher, because I thought it would be easier to think of them as faceless objects or numbers.  I didn't want to be eating a "pet".

I've changed my mind now.   The fact is that I did love the animals we butchered, and I'm glad that I did.  I watched the lambs being born, and helped them find their first milk.  I loved watching them bounce around the pasture in the spring, playing the universal game of chase. 

I remember the two very cute piglets in the back of the pickup on the hot day in July when they arrived, and how "Popcorn" immediately took a nice cool bath in the stock tank.  I remember how much they relished the first field corn I picked and dropped in their pen, and how excited they were when I came to them with a bucket of surplus milk.  

There's no shame in ending an animal's life to turn it into food.   The true crime is to have no knowledge -- and thus no true appreciation -- for the life that becomes your food. 

The New Slavery

As a brilliant inventor and statesman, a progressive farmer, and a tireless advocate for liberty and morality, Thomas Jefferson has a rightful place as one of our nations most respected founding fathers.   But despite his many excellent qualities, he actively and knowingly destroyed the lives of other people for his own personal gain.  Over the course of his life, Jefferson was known to have owned 600 slaves. 

How is it that somebody who was so obviously brilliant and otherwise morally outstanding plays a part in the destruction of 600 people's lives?  A character flaw, perhaps?

As with any other person, Jefferson's benchmark for morality was set by the norms of the society he was a part of.   With a few notable exceptions, that society had no qualms with the enslavement of other people for their own personal gain.  Something which would appear to be unquestionably immoral to an outside observer was thus unquestioned by the society that benefitted from this behavior.   Morality was based not on right or wrong as we would like to think, but rather upon a lemming-like consensus among peers.

You and I are no different.  We base our moral benchmark upon the norms set by our present day society -  not upon right vs. wrong.  Not only does the collective conscience of our society turn a blind eye to our behavior, but it effectively punishes those who would question it. 

The primary difference between Jefferson's moral failure and our own is that his actions had direct impacts on people he knew and saw on a daily basis.  Our moral failures are a bit more nebulous, and thus more difficult to address.  All we can be sure of is that our actions are likely to destroy the life of people unknown, in ways we can only guess at.  In fact, our own lives are likely to be among those destroyed - by ourselves.

Though Jefferson did speak out against slavery and make efforts to end it, he remained a slave owner until his death.  I'm sure the benefits to be realized as a slave owner were very difficult to give up.  I know I'll be the same in this regard, as the benefits of my fossil fuel use are also very difficult to forego.  I'll continue to destroy the lives of people and animals unknown, for my own personal gain and convenience.  But I still plan to chip away at my own dependence.

Truth be told, no human has ever walked the earth without adversely affecting other people or animals.  Our ancestors hunted desirable species to extinction, negatively altering their own environments.  Our agriculture has had negative impacts all the way back to its infancy in Mesopotamia.  It's simply not possible to be a no-impact human.  It is possible to be a low impact human, however.  Modern American society makes each of us far more destructive than our ancestors by an order of magnitude.  Each of us needs to strive for lower impact, both as a moral imperative as well as for the self interest of perpetuating our species. 

The thing is, we'll never know exactly which of our actions were responsible for which effects.  Just as the x-ray of a lung cancer patient has no Marlboro logo which would allow us to determine the exact culprit, no future dustbowl will come with a BP or Peabody Coal logo.  

I believe that the massive and unprecedented heat wave and fires in Russia are a direct and tangible result of my own fondness for driving to the mountains so that I could go skiing.  But nobody will ever be able to pin it on me.  Am I innocent because everyone else was also driving cars too?

Favorite Season

I like winter.  The trees whistle as the wind blows through their leafless branches.  It reminds me of one of my other favorite sounds -- wind whistling through the sailboat rigging in a marina during a storm. 

In spring, just after we're done with our maple sugaring, the peepers (listen to them here) come out, soon to be followed in summer by the orchestra of bugs running day and night.

Fall seems to be the quiet season, but what it may lack in sound is made up for with a spectacular color display.

There's also a "feeling" that goes with fall. Contentment, perhaps. The barn is full of hay, the wood pile is stocked for winter, and everything we raised this summer is now stuffed into the freezer, pantry, or root-cellar.  We're still busy, but the sense of urgency is gone.  There's no hurry to get the hay put up before the next rainstorm hits.

Two weekends ago we used the horses to spread some of the barnyard manure on our hayfield.  Everything went well until the 5th load, when one of the drive chains broke.  It didn't bother me a whole lot, 'cause I was ready to take a break anyway, and it should be an easy fix. 

The break gave me the chance to take Bobby out for another drive, which I wanted to do anyway.  We've been getting out once a week, averaging about 10 miles.  There are miles of gravel roads just south of our house, weaving through a wooded wildlife area bordered by small farms.  Couldn't ask for a nicer spot to take a sunday drive.

Twice now, we've passed an elderly woman sitting in a lawn chair in her front yard, bundled up and enjoying the fall weather.  She absolutely lights up when she sees us, waving enthusiastically.  That never happens when you're driving a car.

10 miles seems to be about Bobby's limit without taking a rest.  Anything much more than that and he starts to slow down.   That's one of the reasons that older towns were rarely spaced more than 10 miles apart;  it simply wasn't practical to travel much more than that before the advent of cars. 

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Our old ram Thunder wore out his genetic welcome, spurring us to find some new blood for the flock.   It just so happened that Tillers International (where I took my draft horse classes) was looking to sell their merino ram.  I remembered him from my classes, where he always tried to parade in front of the horses when we hitched them up.  As luck would have it, someone living just a couple miles from Tillers was interested in Thunder, so we dropped him off and picked up our new ram on the same trip.  Thunder found himself with two nice ewes, who immediately garnered his attention and made him forget all about the traumatic move.

Bam-Bam, as we've named the new ram, looks quite impressive with his large curled horns -- like a rocky mountain bighorn sheep.  He felt right at home with our draft horses, who look just like the horses he's familiar with from Tillers.  He walked up to each horse, extended his right hoof in the air (as if to shake hands) while cocking his head to one side and flicking his tongue.  Bruce (our lead Belgian draft horse) wasn't so keen on this new self-appointed friend, and tried to kick him. 

Bruce knew I didn't like that behavior, and sulked a bit as I scolded him.  Walking back to the barn,  I turned around just in time to see Bruce pick Bam-Bam up in his mouth (ala Tyrannosaurus Rex) and drop him.  I half expected to find Bam-bam mortally wounded with a massive chunk of flesh hanging from the middle of his spine, but he appeared to be unscathed and undeterred.

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We've been looking at wood stoves to replace the electric stove in our kitchen.  The new stoves go for somewhere between $4,000 to $7,000, which seems a bit much.  They also use a lot more sheet metal where the older stoves use cast iron.

We finally found a neat old 1930's Kalamazoo Stove Company model for a good price, which we'll be cleaning up and installing some time this winter.  I was especially fond of this stove because it has a water jacket;  essentially a loop of pipe near the firebox which allows the stove to function as a hot water heater.

Slowly but surely, we're chipping away at our electricity use.  Some appliance replacements are easy.   The wood cook stove, while it will be a bit less convenient than the electric stove, isn't such a big change.  Going without a dishwasher takes a bit more time as well, but it's not a big deal either (Rachel disagrees).  The refrigerator could be replaced with an ice box (got one) and icehouse (not yet built), but that will be a big drop in convenience.  As it is now, I don't think we have the time required to make many more changes.

I think two of the most difficult appliances to do without will be the washing machine and freezer.  Right now we can toss a load of laundry into the washer on a whim.  Historically, most families had a designated "laundry day" each week.  Losing a few hours a week would be a big deal.  

There really is no non-electric equivalent for the freezer, unless you count a smokehouse and lots of salt, or canning and dehydrating as an alternative.  There's always the option of a solar powered freezer, but the associated battery banks, charge regulators, panels, and the appliance itself are all both expensive and complex, and thus prone to high maintenance.  They would contain enough embodied energy to negate any environmental benefits.  Suffice to say that the regular AC powered freezer is a huge convenience that will be sorely missed someday. 

Yet the fact remains that most people in the world get along just fine without *any* of these appliances.  I guess it's all a matter of adjusting the paradigm we've come to accept as "normal". 

I figure that our low energy future will look a lot like our low energy past.  Travelling more than 10 miles will be an unusual occurence.  I'll bet that we don't wash each garment after a single day's wear.  A closet full of clothes will be something for the wealthy, whereas most of us will probably return to the historical norm;  one set of work clothes, and another set of dress clothes (if we're wealthy enough for the latter).

A 3,000 sqare foot home will again be a mansion or a multiple family dwelling both because the materials to build or maintain a house of that size will be prohibitively expensive (if they're available), and heating such a space will also be expensive and/or laborious.

I don't see this as a grim future, however.  It's just a change.  Some of it will be good, some of it bad.  It'll just be different from our present reality.  Embracing it before it embraces us seems like a good idea.

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Some of our hens have discovered that the new hay feeder makes an excellent high-security nesting box. 

Adventure

We've had the buggy out a few times now, with Rachel and Henry even daring to ride.  Bobby has been doing well;  occasionally shying from odd things at the side of the road (such as a plywood silhouette of a horse and buggy), but behaving well around traffic.  We'll give him a little more time on the backroads though before I dare to venture with him into town. 

Due to my lack of experience, I wasn't exactly sure how hard I could push him.  I let him walk up most small hills and continue walking for a while after each one so that he could rest up.  But then on a return leg, he voluntarily trotted up each hill with no hesitation whatsoever.  It's apparently much easier to pull the buggy towards home than it is to pull it away from home. 

We've started harvesting some of our corn, an open pollinated variety called "Henry Moore".  The tallest stalks are about 14' -- some of the ears are sitting at over 8'.  The deer were nibbling at it when it was in the silk stage, but have pretty much stopped since then.  Henry and I harvested a small garden wagon load by hand, which we've been feeding out to the hogs.  It certainly won't be enough to meet all of their feed requirements, but it is neat to be able to provide some of their feed ourselves. 

Speaking of the hogs...  While walking around in the hog enclosure with Rachel and Henry, one of the hogs started nibbling on our dog Bilbo's leg.  At first he assumed it was playfulness, and reacted accordingly.  Then the hog persisted and started biting a little harder, at which point Bilbo realized with horror that he was on the menu.  He quickly forgot about it though, and followed Rachel back into their enclosure the next day.  When I wandered over to talk to her, Bilbo was hiding in the bushes, afraid that the pigs were going to eat him again.  He only came out after we assured him that they were gone.

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A lot of people wonder exactly why we're doing what we're doing out here on our farm.  Really, what's not to like about starting a business where we'll likely never make more than $5/hour if we actually turn a profit?  As an added bonus, the raw milk dairy we've started also makes us a likely target for MDA/USDA raids, as has happened with many similar operations.  Who wouldn't want to have their computers and files confiscated indefinitely as they did with this nearby dairy, or have a gun pointed in their face?

How about spending untold hours cutting, hauling, splitting, and stacking 7 cords of firewood, when we could cheaply heat with propane and have our weekends freed up?  Or how about growing our piles of potatoes, spending hours planting, weeding, and harvesting, when we could easily purchase them for a fraction of the cost (if we count our time as money).  Why work the farm with horses when tractors are clearly cheaper, more capable, and easier to use?  Or why farm at all when it's so much easier to buy our food?  What's with the whole Amish buggy thing when we have two perfectly reliable cars sitting in the driveway?

I've been asking myself these same questions.  Sometimes I'm sure I know the answers, and other times I'm not so sure.  Thus far, the answers still seem to make sense, as we keep doing everything.  Here are the answers that work for me...

Green Acres
Most everyone has a bit of nostalgia for "The Country Life", though most folks are smart enough to shy away from acting on it.  There are all sorts of benefits to living a rural life, like the freedom to go tinkle just about anywhere we want to.

I suspect this is how my grandmother views our endeavors.  She makes lots of comments about clean country air and the like when I speak to her on the phone.  But I suspect she still thinks we're nuts, and will soon come to our senses. 

Adventure -- The Cure for Boredom
I don't like sitting still.  Spectator sports bore me to tears, as does most TV programming.  I'm the sort of person who will walk for an hour to avoid waiting 10 minutes for a 10 minute bus ride to the same destination.  I haven't endured a single minute of boredom since we moved here.

Last night I got to wrestle with a very agitated Maggie the cow as I put her in our shoeing stocks to get an infected foot bandaged up.  After two hours of pulling her to the stocks, dodging kicks, well aimed geysers of manure, and her urine soaked tail, I was definitely not bored.  I wasn't very clean, either.

Peak Oil
I've made references to this before.  Suffice to say that I think the near future will be very different as global oil production begins to decline.  Food and manufactured goods will become both scarce and expensive.  The economy turns south on a permanent basis (oh wait -- that's already happening!), leading to feedback loops which I think will ultimately result in the collapse of the electrical grid.  I wouldn't be the least surprised if it leads to a collapse of industrial civilization within my lifetime (which is a good thing for the survival of the human race). 

The more I prepare, however, the more I realize that my preparations are likely futile.  I figure it's always good to hedge your bets though.  Growing our own food and running the farm with draft animals seems prudent given what I believe is coming.  So does buying a buggy.  They might help us transition to a low-energy world if the transition is of the slow variety, but I suspect the transition will be tumultuous enough that they won't make much difference in the end. 

Sure -- none of the stuff we're doing is necessary at this moment in time, but I see it all as having significant educational value.  It makes sense to know how to do this stuff before it may become a necessity.  I know a lot of folks have a "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" attitude, and I think it's going to bite them.   Build your boat before the floods arrive, eh?

Climate Change
Continuing with my Chicken Little theme, I really do think the sky is falling.  You'd have to be nuts to believe that we can release an eon's accumulation of fossil carbon into our atmosphere without significant consequences.  We're already witnessing the death of the oceans -- an event which many people don't seem to recognize the significance of.  Anyone seen this google map of the recent fires in Russia?  Think of it next time you hop into your car or fly somewhere for vacation.

I'm not worried about saving the planet -- it's us humans I'm worried about.  I think we're probably past the point of no return as far as CO2 emissions are concerned, but...  it's always good to hedge your bets, as I said.  That's why we're spending weekends cutting wood and learning to use fossil-fuel free transportation.

Henry has developed a new tool which may help us convince people to give up their fossil fueled lifestyles.  It's still in the development stage, but looks quite promising.

Henry and his new brain-wave transmitter

Tractors never do this

Doc bolted right for me, as Bobby ran for cover and made me wonder if I should do the same thing.  He'd never been aggressive before, but...

Just as I was contemplating my fate, Doc spun 180 degrees and came to a screeching halt, presenting me with his enormous fanny just inches from my face.   Planted firmly above his tail was a small bird horsefly which I promptly slapped.  It made a satisfying "crunch" as the blood he'd been sucking splattered all over my arm.   Doc thanked me and looked quite relieved. 

This is fly season, which makes me glad I'm not a horse.  The horseflies around here approach 1.5" long, and seem to be especially bad this year.  The horseflies don't bother people too much, unlike the smaller deerflies that like to play "trampoline" on the back of my head.  They seem to be genetically programmed to only land in this spot, such that you never actually see them.  Even if the sun's not shining, I always curse myself for forgetting to put on a hat when they're around.

I had lots of things figured out before we started farming that haven't worked out too well in practice.  One of those things was the promotion of dung beetles.  Why are dung beetles such a big deal?   Because they bury cowpies and displace the face-fly maggots who otherwise inhabit them and grow up to harass every animal on the farm.  Most people unknowingly kill the beetles with wormers such as Ivermectin, and have never seen them.

I was quite excited last year to discover that we do have dung beetles, such as the rainbow scarabs shown here.  Tunnelers like these are the best, since they actually dispose of the cowpies by digging tunnels underneath and then packing them with egg filled dung balls.  Another type is the "dweller", which just lives out a life of bliss while crawling through the food it likes best.   I'm sure their world is very much like the "Land of Chocolate" envisioned by Homer Simpson.

I've done my best to avoid the use of dung-beetle killing wormers, but it just doesn't seem to do the trick.  They're around, but not in enough numbers to bury many cowpies.  Last year I blamed it on the arrival of Doc and Bruce (our draft horses), who had undoubtedly been wormed.  This year, Bobby (our driving horse) and Shasta (our newest cow) could be to blame.  Maybe the beetles will take over next year, but I'm not holding my breath.

We've got some organic fly spray, which is just a bunch of essential oils (cedar, cinnamon, thyme, etc) blended with mineral oil.  Doc knows what it's for, and lets me spray him down with it.  Bruce, on the other hand, runs away from me like a two-thousand pound sissy when he sees the sprayer.  The cows run away from the sprayer as well.  It ain't cheap, but it does seem to work for the animals who hold still long enough to let me douse them.  The conventional sprays all use permethrin/pyrethrin, which are actually quite dangerous neurotoxins, so I've been avoiding them. 

Let's all hope for a nice early killing frost!